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VMware Explore back to Vegas!

VMware Explore back to Vegas!

Today, VMware announced that Explore 2023 will be held in Las Vegas.

The conference (previously VMworld) was held in 2022 in San Francisco at the Moscone Center. 2020 and 2021 were virtual events, and 2019 was also in San Francisco. I did not attend 2018 in Las Vegas, but 2016 & 2017 were also there. 2015 and prior were in SF.

I have attended VMworld/Explore as a customer in 2012, 2015, 2016, & 2017. I attended as VMware Hands On Labs Support Staff in 2019, (2020), & 2022.

Personally, I have enjoyed the events in Las Vegas more than SF. I enjoy the event being in a single hotel/conference center, which leads to better networking opportunities, instead of attendees being spread all over the city. It also seems, anecdotally, that more customers are able to attend in Vegas, with travel/lodging costs being cheaper.

Regardless of where the event is held, it is a MUST ATTEND if you are a IT professional working with VMware or related products in any way. I hope to connect with you at the 2023 event in Vegas!

vSphere 8!

vSphere 8!

vSphere 8 is GA!

VMware has a great landing page that goes into details on all the new features and functionality.

The new DPU functionality, with the ability to offload network services, is a great advancement. How will this change how you architect future datacenters? When combined with the vSAN 8 Express Storage Architecture, there are many opportunities for optimization with next-gen hardware.

VMware
VMSA-2021-0028: Critical VMware Security Advisory (Multiple Products; Apache Log4j Vulnerability)

VMSA-2021-0028: Critical VMware Security Advisory (Multiple Products; Apache Log4j Vulnerability)

On Friday, December 10, 2021, VMware released VMware Security Advisory VMSA-2021-0028 affecting numerous VMware products including vCenter Server. This advisory is re: Apache Log4j vulnerability CVE-2021-44228 with a CVSSv3 score of 10 out of 10.

Resources:

VMSA-2021-0028: https://www.vmware.com/security/advisories/VMSA-2021-0028.html
FAQ: https://via.vmw.com/vmsa-2021-0028-faq
Unaffected VMware products can be referred to on the Knowledge Base article: https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/87068
VMware Blog “Investigating the Log4j Vulnerability”: https://blogs.vmware.com/security/2021/12/investigating-cve-2021-44228-log4shell-vulnerability.html

The key takeaway is that IMMEDIATE ACTION IS REQUIRED. Workaround should be applied to all running products immediately.

This is being actively exploited in the wild, and should be treated as an emergency change with highest priority.

This vulnerability is in the open-source Apache Log4j Java logging library, which is used in numerous software packages. This is not a VMware-specific issue.

Additional background information:
Tech Solvency Log4Shell log4j vulnerability (CVE-2021-44228) – cheat-sheet reference guide

Birmingham AL VMUG – October 2021

Birmingham AL VMUG – October 2021

#vCommunity – Get involved on Twitter:

@ShanFitz, @vMiklm, @DerrickSkipwith, @BhamVMUG, @myVMUG, @vExpert, @VMware, @VMworld

#vExpert

VMworld session replays: vmware.com/vmworld

Recommended sessions:

Multi-Cloud:

MCL1833 – 10 Things You Need to Know About Project Monterey

MCL1853 – 60 Minutes of Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA) 3rd Edition

MCL3222 – VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts: Bring VMware Cloud to Your Data Center

MCL1635 – Extreme Performance Series: Performance Best Practices (vSphere 7 Performance Best Practices Whitepaper)

MCL1277 – A Big Update on vRealize Operations (also recommend: vROps VM Performance Dashboard Deepdive https://youtu.be/9BH7cEJAlu0)

MCL1202 – VMware DRaaS

MCL2768S – Dell APEX Cloud Services with VMware Cloud

MCL1453 – Introducing VMware Project Capitola

MCL2019 – What’s New: Skyline Pro

App Modernization:

APP1482 – Explore Tanzu Community Edition
(How-to blog for Tanzu CE on MacOS: https://www.samakroyd.com/2021/10/06/tanzu-community-edition-on-macos/)

APP2183 – Introduction to Kubernetes for the vSphere Admin (also: kube.academy)

End User Services

EUS1289 – VDI Nerdfest 2021: Demos That Make Admins Drool

Security

SEC1287 – Mount a Robust Defense in Depth Strategy Against Ransomware

vSphere Security Configuration guide

Birmingham AL VMUG Meeting – December 2018

Birmingham AL VMUG Meeting – December 2018

Presentation resources:

VMware Product Interoperability Matrices

vCenter Server 6.7 Update 1 Release Notes

ESXi 6.7 Update 1 Release Notes

vSAN 6.7 Update 1 Release Notes

Upgrade Considerations for VMware vSphere 6.7 (VMware vSphere Blog)

What’s New in Performance – VMware vSphere 6.7 (PDF)

VMware Design Studio

vCommunity – Get involved on Twitter:

@vMiklm, @BhamVMUG, @myVMUG, @vExpert, @VMware

#vExpert

Video:

vROps Sizing Tool

vROps Sizing Tool

A frequent question when deploying vRealize Operations relates to correctly sizing the environment.  An undersized vROps deployment will not perform optimally, and an oversized environment does not best utilize resources.  VMware has a great new tool to make sizing a vROps installation painless:

https://vropssizer.vmware.com/sizing-wizard/

Simply select the version of vROps, input the number of vCenters, hosts, clusters, VMs, etc., make the appropriate selections for data retention, and a sizing recommendation is provided:

I hope you’ll find this helpful for your next vROps deployment.  You can also check your current deployment against this tool to determine if your vROps install may be under- or over-provisioned.